Item 3 has been overwhelmingly devoted to recent readings of fiction.
Non-fiction attracts a sufficiently different clientele that a separate
item might encourage more non-fiction readers to tell us about what they
found interesting.

176 responses total.

Just finished _To Photograph Darkness_, by Chris Howes (S. IL Univ. Press,
1989). Howes recounts the development of *underground* photography. The
book is dense with dates and historical anecdotes, and illustrations
of both photographers and their products. Technical appendices and
references and notes augment the text. What's the story?  I'll just provide
some important events and their dates, as a synopsis of the history:

1839    Calotype and daguerreotype invented.
1861    Underground photography by Nadar in Paris catacombs with arc light.
1865    Cave photography by Brothers (England), using magnesium tapers.
1888    Hermannshohle photographed by Muller (Germany) with flashpowder.
1893    First *underwater* Mg powder flash photography, by Boutan.
1901    Earliest photographic cave postcards.
1903    _La Photographie Souterraine_ (Martel, France) published.
1915    Earliest known underground cine film, White's Cave, KY.
1929    Commercial flashbulb produced (Ostermeier, Germany).
1935    Flashbulb-shutter synchonization introduced.
1952    Big Room (Carlsbad Caverns) photographed in color - 2400 flashbulbs.
1978    Underground hologram in Ogof Ffynnon Ddu (Wales).

Finished "Silence Will Speak", a biography of the life of Denys Finch Hatton.
Excellent reading...Finch Hatton was a hunter and a nobleman in British East
Africa the first part of this century.  The movie "Out Of Africa" dealt
with his life peripherally, but the biography offered some insight.  Try is
..it if you're interested.  Good stuff.

Re-read
"Looking for a Ship" by John McPhee...he chronicles the decline and 
current state of the United States Merchant Marine through the eyes of
one of its members...joins him on a voyage to South America.

McPhee has a talent for taking a subject (like the Merchant Marine) that
most people probably have little interest in or knowledge of, and realy
drawing you into the story and getting you interested...he totally
immerses himself in his subject, and conseequently gets the reader
interested, too.  

Part of his talent, which I find particularly appealing, is that he goes
beyond his subject into the world the subject is part of...for example,
in "Looking for a Ship," there's a particularly well-written section where
(while he is off the coast of South America) he talks about Darwin's voyage
on the _Beagle_, and plate tectonics and how he's sailing over one of
the deepest points in the ocean.

(On a side note, I'm doing my senior thesis on literary nonfiction--writers
like McPhee who mix elements of "literary" writing and nonfiction.  If anyone
can suggest any other authors of this genre--like Tracy Kidder--please
mail me your suggestions.  thanks)

I was just about to give up the search for my 1994 Big Summer 
Book when I came across a biography of Mary McCarthy at Borders, 
_Writing Dangerously_, by Carol Brightman.  It's perfect: 700 
pages long and filled with excellent gossip.  Fat and juicy, in 
other words, and ideal for browsing in the hammock or by the 
pool.  

Did you know that McCarthy's second husband, the legendary critic 
Edmund Wilson, used to beat her up?  One of his favorite tricks 
was to hit her hard and then run into his office and lock the 
door.  This made McCarthy so furious that she lit a bunch of 
Wilson's papers on fire and stuffed them under his office door.  
Wilson, using this episode as evidence that *she* was insane, 
first tried to have her committed and then, when they were 
getting divorced, tried to get sole custody of their son.  
Meanwhile, the Great Man would chase her in a drunken rage around 
the house, at one point literally hurling himself through a 
closed window and badly cutting himself in the process.  
McCarthy's poofy third husband (Wilson was her second) would 
later refer to Wilson as "le monstre."

Geez.  Being cultured doesn't necessarily mean you're civilized,
I guess.

That is really shocking to hear about Wilson.  I've always respected his 
work, but it's hard to respect a critical great also known as "le monstre."
Goodness.  I think I'll read the book.  Thanks for the review.

You're welcome.  Hope you find it as fascinating as I do.  

Did you know that Mary McCarthy's younger brother is the actor 
Kevin McCarthy?  Mary called certain New York intelligentsia "the 
pod people," in reference to Kevin's most famous movie.  (I believe 
it started with Norman PODhoretz, natch.) 

One of the most enlightening parts of the book deals with 
McCarthy's feud with Lillian Hellman, which came to a head when 
McCarthy, in 1979 on Dick Cavett's interview show on PBS, made her 
celebrated remark that "every word Lillian Hellman ever wrote is a 
lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"  Hellman sued Cavett, McCarthy and 
PBS for $2,500,000, over her own lawyer's protests ("Lillian, do 
you really want them to start testing the honesty of every word 
you've ever written?" he asked, wherupon she hung up on him).  Many 
people were enlisted to try and talk Hellman down from the suit, 
including Leonard Bernstein (Hellman wrote the libretto for 
Bernstein's "Candide"), but she would not be dissuaded.  Hellman 
died before the suit could go to court, but not before a legion of 
investigators and critics had determined, among many other things, 
that if "Julia" in _Pentimento_ ever existed, Lillian Hellman never 
even met her, much less had the sort of relationship with her that 
Jane Fonda had with Vanessa Redgrave in the movie.  Hellman had 
made the whole thing up.  

I just finished reading _Insanely Great_ by Steven Levy, which is a history
of the Macintosh.  It traces the history of the Macintosh all the way
back to the article by Vannevar Bush in a 1940s Atlantic through the
work of Douglas Englebart and the Stanford Research Institute and, of
course, Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

One thing I found interesting is how Steve Jobs latched onto the
Macintosh project.  Despite what many think, he was not the father of
the Macintosh.  The Mac was originally championed by a guy named Jeff
Raskin, who was its first project manager.  Jobs saw that it was going
to be much more economically viable than the Lisa computer and
basically wrested it out of Raskin's hands. The story of the political
infighting was quite intriguing.  In some ways, i now have more
respespect for Jobs than I did before, but in many ways I respect him
less.

For all you Mac-heads out there, it's definitely worth reading.

I'll wait until it comes out in pbk.

<moving it from another item>
I'm currently reading "The Trickster, MAgician, and Grieving Man"
by Mazis.  While labelled as a men's spirituality book, it does not 
espouse a particular religion (Mazis, according to the "About the Author"
is allegedly a Zen Buddhist, but that's not all that relevant).  The 
book is written in response to Robert Bly's Iron John school of manhood.
Bly suggests that what's wrong with men today stems from a disconnection
from their fathes.  Mazis' feeling on this is that this is too easy a 
solution:  it's just another excuse for men not to heal themselves,
because they can blame someone else.  Mazis' feeling, rather, is
that men need to reconnect themselves with their emotions -- regardless
of why we disconnected ourselves from them in the first place.  Another
issue that Mazis disputes is Bly's treatment of pain.  But Mazis and 
Bly recognize pain as a potential for learning and as a necessary 
occurrence of life, but Bly portrays pain as a test so men can show 
how they can overcome, while Mazis portrays pain as a simple fact of 
life that men must learn to deal with.
One interesting aspect of Mazis' book is his treatment of the hero image
in modern movies.  So far he has discussed The Unforgiven, Regarding
Henry, Dances with Wolves, and The FIsher King, and how the image of 
the hero varies in each.  He criticizes the American view of the hero
in The Unforgiven as being stoic and laconic.  His discussion can easily
be applied to other movies as well; Fearless leapt to mind as I read the 
book, and Wolf meshed well too (I saw that last night).
There, Rane, does that seem like fiction. :-)

The description sounds like a treatment of the psychology of emotions.
That's not fiction, but it also isn't what I call spirituality (which
is the dictionary definition).

Agreed, but that's how the publishers classed it.  Since the author 
is not a professional psychologist, and since it isn't meant as a
descriptive treatise, but is rather an opinion position book, 
"psychology" isn't a fair title, and "self-help" is so broad as too be 
useless.  

Maybe "Observational".  That doesn't preclude good research or the
inclusion of other techniques of presentation, but suggests the "rules" or
format of a certain style of writing.  

I just finished Gray's "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus."  Luann
is reading it now.  We both agree that while it is filled with generalities,
we find ourselves nodding along with it.  A fun read, and helpful, too.

Browsing a "Talking Books" store this weekend, I came across
C.S. Lewis's _The Screwtape Letters_ read by John Cleese.  I will
definitely rent it soon, as I'm sure it's wonderful.

I bought _Wouldn't It Be Nice:  My Own Story_ by Brian Wilson with Todd Gold
for STeve for Christmas.  I finished it 2 days later.  About how the Beach
Boys got their start and how it effected Brian.  It was really interesting
to see how things went in the back ground, how the songs were written and
recorded.

   And, how Brian really just about destroyed himself.

I just finished _The Bat in my Pocket_, by Amana Lollar. She is a Texas
woman who picked up a bat one day, nursed it back to health, and
established a "relation" with it. She exhibits a rather sentimental
attitude toward her bat, much like other pet owners. If her account is
literally true, though, the bat was responding to her. They are known to
be quite intelligent, long-lived mammals, so it is possible, if one tries.
Unfortunately, bat care is still a somewhat inexact science, and her bat
died, apparently of vitamin D poisoning (which she was adding to its food
on another "expert's" recommendation). That was in 1990. Ms. Lollar now is
a licensed bat rehabilitator in Mineral Wells, Texas. 

 I'm reading "My Life and My Music" by Ravi Shankar, and though I'm only
about 1/2 of the way through it, I'm finding myself wondering why the
Hindu culture and Indian music isn't better known in this country. The
section on his musical heritage is great, where he explains all about
ragas, and other forms of Indian music are all about. I'll write more
here when I finish it.

I have managed to finish _History of Cave Science - The Exploration and
Study of Limestone Caves, to 1900_, by Trevor R. Shaw (Sydney
Speleological Society, 1992). This is a doctoral dissertation converted to
a book. Unfortunately, it was not much rewritten in the conversion. In
addition, most earth sciences had their main flowering after 1900, after
catastrophic geology, and the Bible's influence, had been laid to rest.
Therefore a large portion of this work is devoted to a foot-noted
expositiion of *failed* theories of the origins of caves, cave features,
and cave contents. This is still all interesting historically, and the
author is a historian, but the book has a serious organizational flaw - it
is organized by scientific topics. 

The "Parts" are "Cave Exploration", "Karst Hydrology", "Speleogenesis",
"Speleothems", and "The Overall Development of Speleology". Each Part has
a dozen or so chapters on specific subtopics. This organization is OK when
one is presenting "recent developments" in subtopics, but this book covers
a period when scientists were generalists, and *very few* concerned
themselves with caves. These few generally ranged over the subject
broadly, with *opinions* on almost everything. Therefore each of the
dozens of subtopics present mostly the opinions of pretty much the same
groups of observers on each topic in turn, without ever giving an overview
of individual contributions. 

Finally, almost a third of the contents is devoted to *failed theories*,
such as caves being formed by the gases produced by the rotting of
carcasses after the "flood", and speleothems being vegetative. These are
all somewhat interesting historical mistakes, but it may now be time to
let them gather dust and fade into oblivion. The one aspect of this
omit-nothing historical treatment that would have been valuable, but which
is ommitted, is the place of cave studies in the enormous scientific
ferment that was occurring during the period covered, concerning the age
of the earth, geological processes, and the origin of species (and man).
Cave studies played a small but extremely critical role in this, as cave
preserved the bones of pleistocene mammals and of early humans, and their
artifacts. Those data in the end overturned among scientists the biblical
story of creation, and ushered in the modern era of observation and
deduction. You will have to find a different book to get that story. 

_Bully for Brontosaurus_ by Stephen Jay Gould.  Another collection
of Gould's "This View of Life" columns from Natural History magazine.
Some I'd read before (probably in dentist's waiting rooms), many were
new to me.  From one of them I learned that Gould survived a bout with
cancer a few years ago, and that he recieved a sympathetic and
encouraging "get well" letter from ex-president Jimmy Carter.  Carter
also presented in his letter a new variation on the old argument
from improbability for the existence of God.  (Think of how many
events had to happen in just the way the did in order for human 
consciousness to emerge.  The odds against it happening are staggering.
Says Carter, "I suppose you're more compfortable with 10^30-to-one
odds than with a Supreme Being?"  [comfortable])  Gould gently but
firmly refutes Carter.  The title essay concerns the renaming of
the Brontosuarus genus as Apatosaurus.  Gould (a paleontologist)
prefers the taxonomically incorrect but universally familiar
"Brontosaurus."  There's a wonderful essay about the famous debate
between Samuel Wilburforce and T.H. Huxley -- If you think you know
how it went, you're probably wrong.

_SARNOFF - An American Success_, by Carl Dreher (NYT Book Co, 1977).  A
biography of David Sarnoff, a Russian Jew child, who emigrated at age 9 to
the US with his parents; who started a NY newstand at age 11, learned
telegraphy at age 16, and became the operating manager of American Marconi
just before GE bought it from British Marconi to create RCA. Under
Sarnoff's management RCA mainly sold radios, but also began the first
commerical radio broadcasting in the US with station WJZ, the first
commercial television broadcasting and created RCA-Victor, Raytheon, NBC,
ABC, RKO Studios, etc, and Sarnoff rose to be president and CEO. The
author, Carl Dreher, five years younger than Sarnoff, was there and worked
in several RCA companies, but stayed in engineering (where the money "goes
out" - Sarnoff chose to go into the business end of Marconi, where the
money "comes in"). Dreher provides a "balanced" portrait of Sarnoff - both
the good and the bad, as they say. He devotes a chapter to the bad side of
television - the low cultural level and the violence - as he saw it in
1975! A lot of the biography is quite readable, but I bogged down in
keeping track of the corporate wheeling-and-dealing, with the buying and
selling of companies and the shenanigans of the boards and officers (it
would have helped to have been given a chart of when each company was
founded, and who owned whom, when, and who were the officers and CEOs, and
when.) The primary RCA debacle - its abortive entry into computers - is
also recounted, though the story is very abbreviated. 

_You Just Don't Understand_ by Deborah Tannen.  Like "Men are from Mars..._,
this book was written to help men and women understand each other.  It focuses
on conversational styles, but also attempts to EXPLAIN these based upon
psychological studies (Tannen has a Ph.D. in Psychology, if I recall
correctly).  It is a much-expanded and -updated version of a chapter in her
earlier work (title unknown), which focused more generally on conversational
difficulties in other relationships.

I'm reading two books at once, which I like to do: _The End
of Racism_ by Dinesh D'Souza, and _It's All the Rage_, by
Wendy Kaminer.  Interesting set.  The former is by a right-
wing apologist who sometimes sounds like a liberal, and the
latter is by an old-fashioned liberal who sounds to some people
like a right-winger.  _The End of Racism_ blames black culture for
black failures; _All the Rage_ is essentially an anti-capital 
punishment tract.

_Caverns Measureless to Man_ 1994. Sheck Exley. (Cave Books, St. Louis).
Exley started SCUBA diving as a teenager and quickly discovered cave
diving, which became his passion, perhaps to the point of obsession. But
many things don't get done as well as they are by the obsessed, and Exley
became one of the most accomplished of the cave divers. Over his 30 year
"career" as a more-than-recreational diver he pioneered new techniques for
cave diving for depth and distance, served as president of the two
national cave diving associations, as well as being a founder of one, and
participated in well over 1000 cave diving expeditions. For reasons that
Exley describes, if not explains, cave diving has a competitive aspect,
with divers seeking to go further or deeper than anyone before. This book
recounts many of Exley's adventures in pursuing such goals. While all
records are made to be broken, when this book was published Exley held the
(solo) deepest free dive record in a cave of -867 feet (Mante, Mexico,
1989), and the second furthest (solo) penetration into a water-filled
cave, of 10,939 feet (Cathedral Canyon, FL, 1990). Both Mante and
Cathedral, at the maximum depth/distance, continued, and hence the title
metaphor (after Coleridge). Exley died in 1994, at the age of 45, cave
diving below -900 feet in Xacatin, Mexico. 

It seems that there is something to be said for reining in obsessions...

Yes, you might live longer. However Exley's obsession led to the
development of technology and techniques that have made diving
vastly safer for everyone else. He was a pioneer, and it is well known
that pioneering is always risky. Incidentally, I knew Sheck, but I
*gave up* cave diving about the time he started (and I never went
deeper than 30 feet). I was definitely not obsessed.

Glad to hear we won't lose a board member to THAT particular danger...  :-)

Apropos to _Caverns Measureless......
From the newsgroup alt.caving (edited for conciseness):

        THE MOST DANGEROUS SCIENCE

        In the next episode of PBSÕ Peabody Award-winning science adventure
series, The New Explorers with Bill Kurtis, the New Explorers team travels
deep beneath Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula to explore the world's longest
underwater cave system.  The hour long documentary, "The Most Dangerous
Science" airs on PBS stations nationwide on [Wednesday, 3 January 1996, at
8:00 P.M. EST, in the Detroit area (WTVS - Channel 56)]. 

        In "The Most Dangerous Science", the marriage of the daredevil
spirit of aquanauts and the disciplines of science proves that this quest
into the beautiful but hostile environment of Nohoch may be worth the
price. Deep within these caves could be the answer to the origin of life
on this planet.  This team is discovering new life forms which might hold
the clues to protecting the future.  In addition, this episode of The New
Explorers addresses how mining operations and the development of nearby
tourist haven, Cancun, Mexico, is adversely affecting the pristine quality
of the waters in caves such as Nohoch. 

        Cave diver Mike Madden owns and operates the CEDAM Dive Centers on
the Yucatan Coast, Mexico. Madden has explored over 1,100 underwater caves
as an adventure diver since 1969 and is an expert on the Nohoch cave
system. In addition, he established the Guinness Book world record for
longest explored/surveyed underwater cave system in the Nohoch cenote. Not
far behind Madden is marine biologist-biochemist Dr. Tom Iliffe, of Texas
A&M University at Galveston, who has 20 years of experience as a diver
himself. Iliffe has discovered over 100 new species of organisms living in
these cave systems, including two new orders, four new families and 37 new
genera. 

        Explorer, artist and cartographer Eric Hutcheson completes this
underwater research team.  Hutcheson has combined cave diving, art and
exploration into a career in the cartography of underwater caves.  He has
mapped more than 30 cave systems throughout the underwater world and is
currently charting the Nohoch system. 

        The New Explorers with Bill Kurtis is a co-production of Kurtis
Productions, Ltd. and The Chicago Production Center, a division of Window
To The World Communications, Inc.  Executive producer, Bill Kurtis; "The
Most Dangerous Science" producers, Jeffrey Haupt and Wes Skiles, associate
producer, Julie Skur Hill; editor, Fred Steim; original music/audio
director, David Huizenga; project manager and executive producer for The
Chicago Production Center, Ed Menaker. 

        Teacher training and guides for The New Explorers' education
initiative provided by the U.S. Department of Energy.  For information
about tapes and educational guides from The New Explorers library, call
(800) 621-0660. 

Although Exley dove with hundreds of cave divers - and provides a list
of them all and how many joint dives each - Mike Madden is not mentioned.
I look forward to see if Mike Madden returns the favor. 

My favorite Non-Fiction books are Things To Make books. (This is my first
time on Grex, so I don't *quite* know what to say.) I am in Elementary
School, and my school has a library, and each class goes once a week, so I
know a lot about non-fiction, because I ***always*** get non-fiction
books. Also, we here in Milan, have a Public library. That's all I'm going
to say.

Welcome to Grex, and to books, Jonathan. I'm glad you're reading here,
and offering some thoughts. My favorite books are also usually non-fiction,
and I have certainly worn out several Things to Make books, myself. 
What is your favorite?

Thanks, rcurl! My favorite **Things to Make** books are:
175 Science Experments To Amuse And Amaze Your Friends,
Kids & Weekends,
(and) Paper Projects for Kids of All Ages.

                                kingjon

I had books on scientific experiments when I was your age, and even
had a home laboratory, where I also Amused and Amazed my friends. It
led me into a scientific career.

_The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark_, by Carl 
Sagan.  This is Sagan's attempt to explain our society's apparent 
slide into unreason, and to suggest ways to slow and maybe reverse 
the slide.  He feels that science is the answer, fueling a healthy 
skepticism that demands evidence and isn't gulled by charlatans and 
fools.  UFO sightings, alien abductions, satanic ritual abuse, 
astrology, the "face" on Mars, Elvis sightings, crop circles, and 
conspiracy theories, all get their comeuppance.  

Sagan tries hard to be fair.  His example of a fallacious ad hominem 
argument, in the chapter about "the fine art of baloney detection," 
shows how hard: "The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical 
fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken 
seriously."  Baloney, says Carl Sagan.  He reserves a large portion 
of guilt, in fact, for people we tend to think of as rational and 
yet who deal in baloney with the worst of them -- scientists who 
refuse even to listen to purported new evidence of alien spacecraft, 
or who "debunk" astrology by saying they can't think of any 
mechanism by which it works: the great geophysicists, Sagan points 
out, all rejected the idea of continental drift for the very same 
reason.  In fact, Sagan says he refused to join a group of 
scientists in signing a manifesto called "Objections to Astrology," 
because it dealt in just such fallacious arguments, instead of 
simply describing and refuting the principal tenets of astrology.  

But Carl Sagan is the original "billions and billions" guy.  He 
speculates that people love to think they've seen miracles in the 
sky only because they don't know enough about the *real* wonders up 
there.  He suggests that a "marriage of skepticism and wonder" might 
put us back on track.  That's nice to think, but I tend to side with 
Dennis Miller, who thinks it's already too late for us and that the 
country is now dominated by people who say "Awww" when Chuck Woolery 
announces that the selection of a date won't be revealed until 
tomorrow's episode of "The Love Connection." 

I almost bought this a couple of days ago.  So I'm glad you entered
this review.  Now all I need to figure out is if you enjoyed 
the read. ;-)

Sounds like a successor to Gardiner's _Fads and Fallacies in the
Name of Science_ - on which I was weaned. 

So, how does he suggest sslowing and reversing the slide into darkness?
I am astonished that in "this day and age" people hold to convictions
that are demonstrably false, while ignoring allthe real "miracles"
around us. It seems to me that that most people want to filter out the
details - the "small scales" of our fractal universe. It is an astonishing
demonstration of mass denial.

Re #36: I did enjoy the read, Mary.  Sagan is a nice guy and a good, 
sane, scientist, which comes through in his writing.  Here's a 
characteristic excerpt: 

        I'm frequently asked, "Do you believe there's extraterrestrial 
     intelligence?"  I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot 
     of places out there, the molecules of life are everywhere, I use 
     the word *billions*, and so on.  Then I say it would be 
     astonishing to me if there weren't any extraterrestrial 
     intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling 
     evidence for it.  
        Often I'm asked next, "What do you really think?" 
        I say, "I just told you what I really think." 
        "Yes, but what's your gut feeling?" 
        But I try not to think with my gut.  If I'm serious about 
     understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, 
     as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.  
     Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.  

(I loved that self-deprecating "I use the word *billions*.") 

There are some very touching autobiographical passages in this book.  
Sagan admits to dreaming about his dead parents once in a while, for 
example, and suddenly realizing, in the dream, that they aren't dead 
at all, but alive and well somewhere; but as nice as it would be to 
think that they're actually watching over him from beyond the grave 
(the last words he found himself saying to his father, at the moment 
of his death, were "Take care"), he sees no reason to attribute these 
feelings to anything other than the obvious combination of memory and 
love.  And so he wakes up from the dream and bravely goes through the 
grieving process all over again.  

Re #37: Sagan mentions Gardiner's _Fads and Fallacies in the Name of 
Science_ in this book.  Sounds like he was weaned on it, too.  Sagan 
has lots of suggestions.  His idea that science education should 
combine skepticism and wonder is the best one, in my opinion.  Also, 
truth and freedom go hand in hand for Sagan.  He makes a strong case 
that instilling in all schoolchildren a solid knowledge of their 
Constitutional freedoms may forestall some of the worst imaginable 
consequences of our slide into unreason.  (Sagan makes the astonishing 
(to me) revelation that in the 1980s he and Ann Druyan "would 
routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky's _History of the Russian 
Revolution_ into the USSR -- so our colleagues could know a little 
about their own political beginnings.")

After reading this book, I think of Sagan as a scientist with a 
Wordsworthian streak.  He understands that rainbows are the result of 
sunlight being refracted through drops of water; and yet his heart 
obviously leaps up when he beholds a rainbow in the sky.  He wants 
everyone's mind to be free to have both that knowledge and that joy.  

I'll purchase it this weekend.  I've three other Sagan books
which I've enjoyed very much.  I'm not sure even why I hesitated
except I was walking home and wanted free arms.  

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss